Masks are still required at the moment in all healthcare settings including GP surgeries and hospitals.
COVID infection levels remain high and symptoms like nasal congestion, sore throat and headache are currently more common for omicron, as well as the cough, fever and loss of smell symptoms.
There are still some vulnerable patients in our community despite the excellent vaccine efforts, and we still need to ensure our practice is as safe as possible for patients and staff. I’m proud that all our staff have been fully vaccinated / boosted.
We are not sure how this will change in the future, but I hope that when warmer spring weather comes through, we can open the windows wider, and stop requiring the masks most of the time.
I expect for the next few years we will continue to ask patients and staff with any “viral symptoms” such as cough, fever, sore throat to wear a mask inside the building. This has been common practice in Asian countries for some time.